Preparing your Paper for CaGIS

Workshop Objectives

• Learn about the journal
  • Timeline for review, acceptance rate
• Prepare your manuscript
  • research (new methodology)
  • review
  • essay (vision)
• Contributions & grounded research
• High-quality visuals

Overview of the CaGIS Journal

• Official publication of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society
  • [‘…Society supports research, education, and practices that improve the understanding, creation, analysis, and use of maps and geographic information…’]
  • [‘…journal implements the objectives of the Society…’]
    • articles –> innovative research in cartography and geographic information science.

History

• 1974 : 1990: The American Cartographer
• 1990 : 1999: Cartography and Geographic Information Systems
• 1999 : now: Cartography and Geographic Information Science
• 6 issues per year, ~6-8 articles per issue: ~40 articles/year

Some statistics

Impact factor since 2015

Some statistics

Number of downloads since 2015

Some statistics

Geography of downloads since 2015

Editorial board

Process for publication

Type of papers

• research (most common)
• review
• essay/vision

The structure of your paper (research)

• Title/abstract/keywords
• Introduction: introduce the problem and motivate your paper
  • why do we need this type of research
  • contributions to existing work in the journal or nearby outlets
• A well explained methodology, with testable hypothesis
• If new method (e.g. color scheme, symbol size), conduct surveys with subjects
• Discuss your results (have stakeholders been involved?) -future research

Testing with participants

• Typically in the US, needs to go through IRB

A study on the aptitude of color hue, value, and transparency for geographic relevance encoding in mobile maps.CaGIS 2023

The structure of your paper (review)

• Title/abstract/keywords
• Introduction: introduce the problem and motivate your paper
  • why do we need this review?
    • is the field moving quickly?
    • is it part of a Ph.D. student first chapter?
• How is the review conducted? PubMed, Google Search?
• If new method (e.g. color scheme, symbol size), conduct surveys with subjects
• Discuss your results (have stakeholders been involved?)
• future research

The structure of your paper (review)

Example of a literature review/essay

Lines between essays and reviews can be blurry.

• Essays will generally be given to ‘senior’ reviewers who have a solid and wide understanding of the field

documenting literature query

The structure of your paper (essay)

• Title/abstract/keywords
• Introduction: introduce the problem and motivate the rationale behind the essay
• You will need some lit. review to ground your research
• Approach could be:
  • Analytical and Reflective on different perspectives, theories
  • Argumentative: present or defend a particular argument or viewpoint
  • Critical Evaluation: evaluate existing knowledge, identifying gaps, inconsistencies, or areas needing further research.
  • Theoretical Focus: exploring conceptual frameworks and their implications.
• Directions for research

Authors order is important

• Generally, the individual who conducted the majority of the work, should be first.
• However, in some domains (public health) the adviser goes last.
• Sandwich authors when contribution is limited
• Author for correspondance

What is Reproducibility & Replicability?

When the same analysis steps performed on the same dataset produce the same answer. (Turing Way)

by Scriberia for The Turing Way community (CC-BY 4.0)

How do we make our research reproducible? - FAIR:

R&R (again)

Codes!

• Some journals & conferences ask you to submit code along with your paper
• Anyone (with a similar level of skills) should be able to do reproduce your research and benefit from it.
• If you do analysis in ArcGIS Pro, you need ArcGIS Pro to recreate that analysis
• If you don’t have ArcGIS Pro, what do you do?

Preparing flowcharts (\(\frac{1}{3}\))

• Importance of replicability; a flowchart can really help.

documenting data collection wrangling

Preparing flowcharts (\(\frac{2}{3}\))

replicable research

Preparing flowcharts (\(\frac{3}{3}\))

technical flowchart

Preparing maps (\(\frac{1}{2}\))

• Figures should be in TIFF or EPS format.
  • Formats such as GIF, JPEG, PDF are not acceptable
  • Images produced in or embedded in PowerPoint / Word not acceptable
• Resolution must be 600 dpi.

Preparing maps (\(\frac{2}{2}\))

• Multipart figures should be labelled a), b), c), etc. These should all be included in one image file
• Do not embed captions within the figure, include these at the end of the manuscript
• When exporting to EPS or TIFF, all fonts should be embedded.
• Myriad Pro (sans serif) font is used for figure captions.
• All figures can be color (there is no additional charge for color).
• Tables also must be removed from the main text manuscript and saved as a separate file.

Example (how to improve?) (\(\frac{1}{2}\))

Map Doctor Guide, Journal of Maps

Example (how to improve?) (\(\frac{2}{2}\))

Maps - example of effective design (\(\frac{1}{3}\))

Maps - example of effective design (\(\frac{2}{3}\))

Maps - example of effective design (\(\frac{3}{3}\))

Graphs: Simplify!

• Franconeri, Steven L., et al. “The science of visual data communication: What works.” Psychological Science in the public interest 22.3 (2021): 110-161.

Graphs: What do you want the reader to focus on?

Graphs: Scale axis

• Message will be different depending on:
  • how you present your data
  • your audience

knitr::include_graphics(“imgs/effectiveGraphB.png”)